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Water changes advice needed

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hello fellow members,

As the titles states, i need some advice in regards to water changes. But first let me explain my method.

I have a 25g rubbermaid bucket that i fill up with tap water at the beginning of the week. I leave it all week to gas out the chlorine with regular stirring a few times a day. At the weekend after removing the necessary water i then replace with this water. This works for me and has done for the last 2 years because:-

i) Tap water doesn't have chloramines so only need to remove chlorine.
ii) Due to a hot climate, i cannot use tap water the same time i change water because the cold water tap is warm, and quite hot during summer months.

Now to the problem, i have adopted a 4 month old kitten and i'm worried she will drown in the bucket. Aside from putting the bucket in another room, can can i prevent this? I dont want to cover it since i'm trying to gas out the chlorine.

Obviously you have no experience with kittens or cats as such! They are inquisitve creatures and will try anything to get where they wanna go. Remember that from a kitten's eye view, the top of the bucket looks like a flat top so she would be tempted to jump up.

I like the flyscreen idea, but in order for it to work it would need to be strong enough to support the cat's weight should she jump onto it. How about drilling a few holes in the cover of the bucket? Would that lesson the gas exchange?

Temporary cover~at 4 months it won't be long before she is big enough to know better.

Couldn't you use Prime + some ice bottles in the short term to remove chlorine/cool water enough to use straight from the tap? Ice cools water pretty quickly..

I wouldn't want to waste money on dechlorinator when i can just gas it out for a while. I only have a tiny 1 shelf freezer at home and it's always full without ice blocks. My method works, just only now i have to think about the cat.

we raised our peeps in a huge 55 gallon tub with an extremely curious cat. to solve the problem we covered the tub with a metal screen and a couple of bricks that way when the cat jumped up onto the tub...and he did daily...he could check out the peeps without causing any harm.

Just as I wrote a month ago, you do not need to store water at all. All you need to do is add chlorine remover. Chlorine remover is hardly a "waste of money" when not using it requires all this extra work. Nearly all of the chlorine removers also remove heavy metals so I can't see how it's ever a waste of money. Storing water, to me, is a waste of time.